A Game of Chess
by Disguise of Carnivorism
Summary: Misa Amane would like her heart back. Unfortunately, Light Yagami is in need of it. /AU/Labyrinth-splice/
1. The Flesh, The Blood

A GAME OF CHESS

_(The Flesh, The Blood)_

_

* * *

_

"And what would you like me to do, Misa Amane? Make all the bad things in your life disappear?" asks the shadowed figure slowly, his scarlet eyes surveying her even as he paces the room.

_Not this. Not mock me_, she thinks. But it is too late—his mere presence, mere appearance, ridicules every daydream, every fantasy, laughing and jeering in the process. With the jagged panes of a too-thin face to the unbearably theatrical spiked armor that encases his torso, he mocks and scorns her; every glance from his burning, cruel gaze screams with merciless derision, shattering her vision of the graceful immortal, the gentle being. His very existence laughs at her.

All she can feel is horror.

_Brutal_, she thinks. _He's so brutal._

_What do her dolls see?_

Out of place against her childish belongings, his asymmetrical clothing makes him look even more lethal, more alien; but to the gleaming doll eyes, is he just another one of them—another being, impossible, slipshod, yet perfect in design? He is not tall as she dreamed him to be, but rather of average height (and it isn't his height that makes him so fearsome). To the dolls, though, from their perches on her walls, is he anything more than just another giant come to play?

With their button eyes and their mouths sewed shut—do they see the monster behind the beauty, as she sees? Do they see his bloodthirsty, angry eyes; do they see the way they glow in the twilight? Or are their button eyes blinded by his tanned, youthful face—deluded and duped into thinking him just another human?

But their mouths are sewn shut. How can she have expected them to warn her?

She has summoned him so that she might bargain with the Devil. Never play chess with a demon, never eat their food, never believe a word they say. The Devil is a liar. The frightening, beautiful, ethereal man in her room is a liar.

She says nothing but keeps her head lowered. Desperation summoned him and it will not let him leave again. She watches his dark boots, covered as they are in thousands of polished silver straps, imperfectly mal-aligned. Wearing them would be unthinkable in her own world—too hard to put on, too extravagant even for the height of fashion. The rational side of her keeps droning its observations on his odd appearance—how his hair is too long in parts and too short in others, how he appears far too feminine. It is the rational side that is trying to keep her sane, to save her from the panic that might consume her should she stare into his eyes again.

"Am I to kill the man who took your parents away from you? Stop his life to make you happy?" Even though his face is hidden, Misa can feel his amusement. She is humorous to him; weak and suffering as she is, it does nothing but drive him to the edge of laughter. Not even pity.

And he seems engulfed by that raw fairy-tale magic she once longed for—but reality reveals it to be a childish quality, heightened by his mood swings and glee at her fear. What fool made him a king? Who dared to put the crown of magic upon such a man? Or is it the king that made this creature, the crown that turned him into a monster?

Still she says nothing. After all, that is correct; that is what she has asked of the Goblin King—to take her away from the nightmares, the pain, the loneliness. And here he is, dressed as night, ready to make her dreams come true. She hadn't expected a white knight, but she had also not expected a demon to come in his stead. Can her button-eyed dolls feel her fear, or are their stuffing hearts immovable?

The pacing stops, and suddenly, he is facing her, his red eyes gleaming. He smiles, clasps his hands together. Then she can't think, can't see—his hand is tearing into her chest, tearing through her skin. Bone crunches. Stabbing pain—the flexing of his fingers inside her chest. She can feel them, his fingers as they wrap around the still-beating heart, his hand as it slides further into the hole he made.

And then he is ripping it from her. Everything ruptures outwards in red. The heart doesn't want to leave her—it beats against him, rushes, tries to pull itself from his grasp. He yanks. Something breaks. The heart tears away. (And beats even still.)

The left hand of the king of magic holds all his wrath, all his lies bottled within the bones and sinew. What is in his right hand? (She knows the answer to this question now. She wishes it were wrong.)

She looks down, collapses down, and sees red, a world filled with reds. She can't remember ever seeing so many different shades of the color. What is she looking for? (It must be up, and so she looks to him.) His hand is black—is it a glove? She can't tell. His hand is raised above them both and it is raining down upon him—blood is streaming down his face, blinding his eyes, coating his lips. There is blood on his hand, trailing down his fingers, dripping from his arms; he is covered head to toe in blood that rains from her heart.

Red-handed, ha, she caught him red-handed. She sees his face, and the drops of blood on his skin almost match the color of his eyes. She sees him raise his bleeding hand to his face and she watches as his tongue darts out and licks one of his blood-covered fingers. Is he drinking her blood? Maybe. He smiles like he enjoys it. (She remembers reading a story once where someone lost their heart…. She can't remember how they got it back)

Blood, whose blood is it that paints the floor? Whose blood is it that covers her furniture? She watches as he grins down at her (surely he wasn't this tall when she was on her feet?). He stands as if he were a god and she can see the light shining behind him, obscuring his face from her view, obscuring all but his blood-covered hand.

(Gods of Death have red hands.)

Pain, the room is spinning with the pain. Her mouth opens; she feels blood gushing out of her lips, down her face (and she shouldn't be bleeding from there, but she is—without the heart to direct them, her veins make choices of her own). She is falling deeper into the floor, feeling the hole he made in her chest, the deep hole that reaches to her empty heart. Cold—it is cold. She feels lighter and heavier all at once. Her eyes drift up towards the man sneering down at her; he does not kick her, but instead looks carefully at the heart beating desperately in his hand as if it can fly back to her, back into her chest where it belongs.

"I will not be your knight in shining armor. I will not whisk you off your feet and bring you to my castle." She can not see his face through the blood that pours through her eyes. "The Labyrinth demands penance; it is the price for bringing something to me. You wished yourself away—therefore, I took the essence of what you are. Your heart. You have thirteen hours to complete the Labyrinth and retrieve it. The clock begins ticking now."

He is beautiful to Misa, and yet he is hideous to look at—he is lopsided; his face remains crisp and clear while his clothing blends together. His hair is long on one side of his face and short on the other, and yet he is beautiful. He is some childish monstrosity, some horrible painting she would sneer at in a museum. He is his stead-fast eyes that stare through her soul, the monster in the closet, the childish nightmare she should have grown out of.

Everything she has been taught condemns him. His face is spectacular, but his eyes are too sharp for the camera—they would break the lens if he stared too long. His hair is too long for a man, and he is too feminine, far too woman-like—even for a model. He does not look his part, but even in his twisted, deformed fashion sense, he is beautiful in a way that she will never be beautiful. She covets his dark beauty, the lightning in his eyes as he holds her heart aloft, a beacon to the world. She wants that lightning for herself.

There is blood on his fingers; the minute hand spins, lands on thirteen. It rests there, waiting for Misa to get up from her bleeding mass on the floor. He is gone, the man is gone; he stole her heart. He stole her goddamn heart, and he is going to keep it.

_"Someone take me away from this awful place!"_

She stands slowly, her right arm feebly grasping at the branches of a nearby tree. The pain is everywhere and nowhere—it is intangible as she stumbles towards the looming walls of the Labyrinth. The pain is made of the stones; it rests in her chest, and yet it spreads through her body with every absent beat of her heart. Her world is a blur of colors—she sees none of them but red, the red of her missing heart. She can hear it crying, wailing as the Goblin King strangles it into silence.

Her knees are scraped as she falls and climbs up again, feeling nothing—not the rocks in her flesh, not the hole in her heart. The pain still lingers between here and there, under her fingernails, behind her eyes. The walls grow larger as she approaches, stretching far above her head, brushing against the orange sky. She hears laughter through the still-beating of her heart. It reminds her of a jackal cackling madly in the night, teeth bared to rip the bones from a dead man's flesh. It is dark and sinister and she feels a pang of fear before it is gone amongst the agony that consumes her.

She notices the structure of the wall, the faded inscriptions and the fraying sculptures—like an old monument from Europe. She watches the chipped statues of goddesses, of angels, of demons, all motionless and silent. They are delicately wrought, but have grown old and eroded with time. Bits have fallen to rubble along the path. She walks amongst them and wonders if she is stepping on their marble fingers as she makes her way towards the Labyrinth's gate. (And the laughing continues, builds, even as she stumbles towards the looming gateway.)

She sees the owner of the laugh dancing among the statues eagerly, his black form flickering in and out of sight. He takes the guise of a demon; he stands at a height far greater than any normal human, floating on crooked, spider-like limbs and tattered black clothing. Hanging from his waist is a frayed notebook and a ring of silver keys—and she hears the keys tinkling with the laughter.

Her feet bring her to the locked, closed doors and she turns to the ragged laughs.

"Please, help me," she says, hesitating at the sound of her own voice frayed beyond recognition; devoid of heart and spirit, it is no longer the voice of an actor and a model. It isn't her voice, she wants to cry—her voice has emotion, love, joy. This voice has nothing but words and the lost beating of her heart.

The creature continues to cackle madly, taking joy at the sight of her slumped against a wall with blood pouring from her chest in a great flood of liquid red (and she doesn't know how she's still bleeding—it should be gone, drained; she should be empty). She grits her teeth as the thump of her absent heart sends another gush of blood out of her body. Soon, she knows, there will be nothing left to bleed. How will she recover her heart if she is dead? How will she drag herself forward when there is nothing left but an hollow body?

"Please, sir…. Open the door, let me in." Her words are empty, like the space where her heart once existed.

The creature doesn't move to open the door, doesn't even deem it necessary to speak to her. He simply laughs away at her pain.

"So what did Kira do to you?" he says as he stares at her half closed eyes, his own bulging out of his pasty face like two glass marbles painted in bright orange and dotted with red's insanity. (And his grin is split, gaping—black as the rest of him but for the faded yellow of his jagged teeth.)

She falls to her knees at the name, crushed beneath it as she hacks to clear her lungs of its sound. She stares up in hatred at the demon-creature. (And at least she doesn't need a heart to hate, she thinks.)

"He stole my heart. I have to go in and get it. Could you please open the doors?" How odd, those hateful words she speaks. To steal one's heart is to love them—the Goblin King did not steal her heart. She feels no love for him. He has stolen her essence; she hates him, loathes him, wants to rub the taste of his name from her tongue.

(What do humans know of love and hearts?)

"So you're Kira's new plaything? You're a bit different than the other victims; you aren't dark. This is going to be fun." The demon addresses her in a too-intense manner, one that makes her feel as if she were examined as a thing and not a person—not even a guinea pig. It offends her, but not as much as it should have. The pain blocks out the anger and only the contempt remains.

"The doors, please."

Thirteen hours isn't long if she goes at this aching pace; for the Labyrinth is a mass of twisting crevices. She saw it as she stumbled down the hill, and she knew she would fall to her death, buried in its convoluted depths before the hours passed. She feels the clock ticking but she can't run; it is as if all her limbs are failing. Only her mind remains. Her panicking, dying mind, disintegrating like the stonework that stands before her is all that remains.

The demon cackles again before flying and hopping over to the doorway, unlocking it, and pushing through to reveal a path of molding stonework that stretches to the horizon in two directions, buried in fall leaves and bare, tree-less branches. She stands still, looking right, then left, turning back to where the demon is laughing.

"This isn't a labyrinth…. It's too big." She makes no move to choose a direction in the maze; to her it seems impossible. The Goblin King won before she started—she will never find his castle… she will never find her heart.

"You're just taking that for granted."

Misa turns right and sets off, stumbling down the path, closing her eyes to the endless horizon ahead. It can't last forever. Even the Goblin King doesn't possess such power. He can't possess such power. No creature can be so like a god and a demon. Kira is not a god. She thinks.

(And blood follows behind her, soaking through her shirt, seeping down her legs, dripping off her feet—her own bleeding trail of bread crumbs, to be eaten away by the carrion crows.)

* * *

**Scourge's Note: There will be no fluff. Thank you. Good day. **

**(And believe me, we're doing you a favor. Our fluff would be like carrot-flavored cotton candy. EW.)**

**Also, we would quite adore reviews. Y'know, just… if you have some time on your hands. And stuff.**

**As to the updating status of this.... Writing project positions are as such: Mors Vincit Omnia is written through chapter nineteen, posted through... eight, nine, I don't remember; Whispers in the Dark is written through five, posted through two; Shadow of the Valley is complete, but needs the final two parts put up. This is our "post as soon as edited" work, so it's... right where you just read.  
**

**Disclaimer: Labyrinth and Death Note are not mine. The characters belong to the latter; all setting-breaks are property of the former and chosen.**


	2. Naught But Lies

A GAME OF CHESS

_(Naught But Lies)_

_

* * *

_

"Do you believe in magic?"

Humans are supposed to say yes—or so they always tell him. Their fairytales, their dreams, their fantasies all revolve around that mystical phrase that the king can never fully fathom.

(He never quite understands why they find him so miraculous, so exotic, so inhuman. He probably knew once—but if he did, he's forgotten.)

The Goblin King lounges upon his throne, legs and arms lazily askew, staring at the yellow fog outside his window. It hangs clumped and poisonous on the air, swirling unnaturally—as if it is composed of thousands of writhing, tentacle-encrusted creatures. (They are grasping for their prey… struggling to drown some hapless beast beneath their toxic clouds, trying to strangle it in their gnarled jaws—in his mind, in the smog, something dies.) And it is just the beginning of another endless day in his dying kingdom.

The heart keeps a steady rhythm, locked inside a box. He can see the lid creak open with every breath it takes, breathing in its beloved fairy tale magic, suffocating on his world's aura—on his own aura. His scarlet eyes turn from his window to the beating, creaking, wooden box, and he is fascinated.

_Do you believe in magic?_

He asks them that question whenever they have the nerve to summon him (because it is sheer nerve that calls him from his own dealings into their world.) And they gape at him in horror, in disbelief, before sputtering out their answer. It doesn't matter what they say, because Kira knows why they summon him to solve the problems they are too lazy to handle themselves—somewhere deep in their bleeding, clogged hearts, they believe in magic.

Kira, however, does not.

He does not believe in their fairy tales, their golden princes, their white knights—and he will not bring himself to play out their pathetic fantasies just for their own entertainment. Kira amuses no one. He is no one's puppet; he is not their toy doll to be left in the gutter, used only at a moment's need.

He is not their Fairy Godmother. He will not make their dreams come true, or the ills of their world go away. Born a peasant, they will stay in their workhouse and starve (he remembers the way the orphan girls plead with him, and how they still aren't pretty covered in tears and grime).

The heart in the box begins to rush its tempo once again, attempting to fly from its wooden prison—flee back to the blonde girl he stole it from. He ignores it, his pale fingers tapping against the stone armrest that calls itself his throne. His eyes find the window outside once more, crimson beacons watching the ever-changing labyrinth from his palace.

(And beneath him, the pathways and dead-ends shift, growing bored of their current state and wandering away—only to make another road, another path that leads to his palace, and, of course, another trail that leads nowhere. Such is the Labyrinth: A mass of changing thought…. Magic—or so the humans would say.)

The Labyrinth whirls again to reveal the girl bleeding against a wall, her blonde hair matted with blood, her fake blue eyes dull and fogged beneath the mind-numbing pain. She staggers forward all the same—and Kira watches, a smile stretching across his face. (And it is charming yet savage and sharp, a clash of tooth and skin and cheekbone in a way that just shouldn't exist.) He does not work to save girls from poor houses; he does not give them gold and princes. He has not the heart to work such miracles.

His eyes stray to the box and he finds himself rethinking that last phrase, turning over a slightly less literal way to state what he truly means. The slash across his face grows in a twisted expression of glee. All the while, the heart beats desperately in its velvet-lined cage, bleeding against its prison walls.

_"I've brought you a gift."_

She feels the shadow stalking her, the demon laughing as she stumbles down her chosen path, which seems to stretch out for eternity. She knows it doesn't, she hopes it doesn't—she has her doubts that she can find its end. And all the while, the demon is laughing.

(It sounds rather like a hyena's laugh, she supposes. She remembers with a muted horror that hyenas are scavengers… like the crows that sit on the stone arches, and the walls that tower above her, he is waiting for her blood to run out.)

The stones beneath her remind her of a fairy-tale—cobble-stones, she thinks, an uneven pathway that makes her trip as she stumbles away, blood flowing from her chest. Get up, get up or you'll die; don't cry, Misa—just get up and keep walking.

Your parents have always been dead; they will never be avenged. You still have your legs, so use them. Magic, this place is magic. The Tin-Man has no heart. There are many characters who survive without a heart. She doesn't need one. She just needs to reach it in time….

(In the distance she can hear it sobbing, crying out for her….)

Misa Amane does not need a heart, so she moves painstakingly, one fractured step at a time as she ignores the laughter and ridicule, as she keeps walking, gritting her teeth the whole while.

You can survive without a heart. People even sell their eyes, their souls, their voices… and they live, don't they? Yes, they are worse off; yes, they rot away amidst the misery of their own mistakes and self-made vices…. But they survive.

Misa will survive to see his crimson eyes again, to watch him at the end of that thirteenth hour—to blind him so that he can't see the hole in her chest or the pain written in blood on her face. It will be his blood that paints her skin, his blood that soaks her clothing; it will be his own heart beating frantically in her hand.

She does not need a heart to dream of vengeance, and so she walks on, envisioning his blood, his veins, his demise, watching as the horizon extends before her, like a dying tree in winter… stripped of all its leaves. The autumn air is filled with dead leaves; winter is coming. The frost eats at her bare skin, but she feels nothing—only the pain of her caged heart thumping from far away, attempting to be free.

(The true irony, she finds, is that she did not understand the truth behind all those romances until she lost her own heart. He _stole _her heart—she _locked _her heart away in a box for safe-keeping—she _gave _her heart away—she _has _no heart….)

All her fairy-tales are lies.

_"That's what you were looking for."_

"You giving up yet?" asks the black demon between stifled giggles. He peers down at Misa with an interest she once would have called abnormal or frightening (now it is simply unremarkably horrifying—a carrion crow buried beneath ten thousand still-bleeding corpses).

She clutches her arms across her chest, leaning against a wall to block out the cold. She attempts to smile, but finds only a cruel sneer painting her face. It feels new, unnatural to her muscles; it is certainly no expression she has ever made befoe. She supposes it might have something to do with the gaping hole in her chest…. But that is simply a theory.

"You're a raven, aren't you? I read a poem, once, about a raven…. You talk more than he does…. Poe's raven…."

Nevermore—you shall live nevermore, you shall love nevermore, nevermore, nevermore, nevermore. The raven speaks with the glass of broken one-way mirrors; the demon speaks with the blood of her heart pouring from his yellowed teeth.

The raven convulses with laughter, falling over himself as he topples from his perch to the leaf-strewn ground before her. She says nothing, does not even blink as she watches him shake and tremble with an amusement that she cannot decode (she understands that she cannot understand, but she cannot understand—so does that mean that she understands, or does not understand? She doesn't know anymore). She is shaking; somewhere, her heart is pounding—blood is spewing from her chest and staining the ground beneath her feet. (Why, oh why, isn't she dead yet?)

"Light never tells anything to the ones he doesn't like."

She knows the words are not for her, are meant more for the stone walls and the orange sky than for her. And yet, his statement annoys her; beneath the pain of her bleeding heart and the haze of her vision, it annoys her. It grates more than the blood dripping down her legs, more than the walls surrounding her, more than anything she has ever experienced. And perhaps this is because she does not know if it is the truth or a lie—or a half-truth, half-lie, a twisted horror story stuck in between. (Because what sort of story is not black and white? Hers is red, so scarlet against the frosty ground, on the run-encrusted walls—she cannot imagine gray.)

"You know, Light doesn't like me either. That's why I'm stuck in the Labyrinth, day after day, year after year, waiting for someone to walk through the door. It gets very boring out here…. But enough about me; I'm just a lowly Shinigami. How about you?" Once again, the demon begins to laugh.

_hyuk hyuk hyuk_

(And the laughter reminds her of the mad laugh of the villain; the victory call that each tall, lean figure lets out with a great bellow; the cry that summons the hero from the dead and beyond.) No hero dares show his face.

God of death—yes. she supposes it does fit him rather well. Ravens, too, are some sort of god of death.

"Raven, which way should I go?" Misa asks out of a need to stop the laughter. She doesn't actually expect the demon to look at her with its wide-spread eyes and grin, maliciously, harmfully. There are no such things as friends in this world. She does not want him to point her the wrong way. She doesn't want this god to be cleaning her bones.

"One time, someone went that way." He points in the direction opposite Misa, the way she has come from, soaked in the bread-crubs of her missing heart. (And she wonders if the birds have eaten them away, yet—or is Raven the only bird in this nightmarish world? "But you shouldn't go that way. Light never likes it when people go… that way." He seems to find this funny; jagged, aged-yellow teeth split once more into that grease-paint smile.

Light, Kira, Goblin King…. She hardly needs to call him anything at all—she can feel his presence right over her shoulder, walking in her crimson shadow, whispering in her ear. He is a presence, not a name.

"He does not like it…. What happens if I go straight?" Misa asks once again, voice weak and, somehow, bloodless, but still pinning down the demon and challenging it for answers she is certain it will not give. She does not expect them, but she wants them all the same.

"Well, you'll go straight, I guess."

He mocks her behind his stupidity. Behind his blunt answers and even more blunt excuses for advice, Misa smells manipulation. At this point, she does not care. She would rather walk in her own bleeding footsteps than follow the unknown path that reeks of his presence—the presence who possesses her heart.

(Goblin King, Kira, Light.)

_"It's full of openings."  
_

She finds herself with the ability to pass through a wall—or not a wall, she thinks, but a hole in the wall. An optical illusion. The Labyrinth is full of illusions, the demon assures her between the laughter at her attempts of survival. This time, she believes him as she slips in her own foot steps and crashes to the earth below.

She wonders how she looks covered in blood and leaves with her hair tangled and chaotic, her knees scabbed and bleeding. She rests on the stone pathway, staring at the wall—and she sees it shifting for a moment. She sees another new path, another new road to take, another winding trail that leads inward to the Labyrinth. She blinks and it is gone. An image, a dream—the Labyrinth is toying with her and she knows it. It likes to torture her….

She stands and walks, listening to the god of death laugh (she refuses to ask him again—he knows, but she refuses to ask him again). Her body is leaning against the wall for support; her legs work but to a point, only to a certain point. It is in this way that she falls through the second wall.

She is bleeding, falling to the ground and cursing and wailing, covered in blood. She is screaming and the demon is laughing. The demon is always laughing…. (Why won't he stop?)

It is not obvious, the hole in the wall. She wouldn't have noticed it by looking directly at it. (There might be hundreds of holes in the Labyrinth, hundreds of gaps in its walls—she just can't see them.)

She stares blankly at the wall, then peeks behind her. (Her footsteps are gone; the blood is gone. She wonders if, perhaps, the Labyrinth has given it back.)

The demon is laughing (chortle, guffaw, snicker—the guttural hacks are more like the dying coughs of one Consumed than any of those words, any of those true laughs). She stands, supporting herself painfully, feeling the warm copper flow sink to her feet once again as her upper body starves for blood. She walks forward into the new path before her, saying nothing as she turns a corner into her new road.

And suddenly, the sun burns pale and the world grows dark.


	3. Mixed, Their Blood

A GAME OF CHESS

_(__Mixed, Their Blood)_

* * *

The trees bleed into the earth, their inky shadows welling beneath the girl's feet, their red-stained blossoms floating down casually before her. Beyond the walls and the illusions of the Labyrinth, there is yet another illusion. The mask behind the mask, the Labyrinth twists and turns, changing its nature before it can be glimpsed by human eyes.

The sky has turned a pale shade of white. Stretching across the heavens, it looms above her, watching with invisible eyes, and listens with unseen ears. The shadow behind her dances ahead, across the inked drawing. His yellow eyes watch her as he perches on the dripping branches; the ink stains the soles of his boots.

The Labyrinth is melting away in small droplets—the ink, the blood, the sky all flowing into the earth beneath her mortal feet. Her heart's silent pounding sends the blood into the earth, to join Kira's ever-changing vision. Black, white, and red flow together, the blood of the Labyrinth—the essence of the magic she had once craved so dearly.

"Kira drew it himself, you know." The raven snickers, watching for her reaction as her fingers brush against the dark. Kira, again—the Goblin King appears to be everywhere within these walls. Omniscient and omnipotent, he watches his kingdom well, even as she makes her way through the unseen passages.

_Kira…_

She nods at the words, aware of their reality—for who else but the red-eyed god could have envisioned such a place.

The god of death continues in spite of her agreement. "Back when he needed paper and a pen. He's too powerful for such trinkets now, of course. Now, he doesn't need anything at all, 'cause the Labyrinth's already drawn it for him by the time he thinks it up." The grin, the knowing, seeing, mocking grin stares down at them all. There are words unspoken here; she feels them floating through the air, through the dark liquid rushing beneath her feet.

But she does not have time for queries about the man, the king, the god. She has merely come for the heart she lost, not for questions of past and present. So she turns and trudges through the flowing world, oblivious to the shadows of doves, to the emptiness of the sky. Time has eroded the Labyrinth's hopes and dreams; morality is a young man's conquest and the Goblin King no longer has time for pity.

She is merely a child on an errand, and has no time to see the hand of God.

_"Even down looks up."_

She is the shadow, the memory of what once had been humanity. Watching from the shadows, out of mind and sight, she is not the Goblin King—but she has his eyes. Though hers are streaked with silver, she has inherited his sight, his wisdom, and his bitterness. She trails after the blonde child, after the trail of blood that flows from her chest. She follows close behind as the girl drags herself deeper into the heart of the Labyrinth.

The girl speaks with empty words, human expressions that mean nothing to the crumbling walls. The Labyrinth is dying. Its enchantments are losing strength and purpose; it is lost to the whims of its inhuman ruler. But then, it has been dying for centuries. Humanity isn't found so easily inside the stone walls anymore; the faith is wavering, and now the girl is the only one left.

And it is her blood which stains the pavement, giving life to the crumbling wall, reviving the Labyrinth, calming the tempest that had been building in the doubt of its king's mind. For they are all connected, the king and his stone walls—they are one, and as they bleed together, his past is absorbed until he becomes little more than another illusion.

The shadow is heir to the throne. She never forgot the king's promise, however empty it might appear. But now the girl is here, and her mortality is a beacon for all the world to see, and the shadow does not know if that promise will withstand the light. So she follows—in fear, in hope—for the king surely deserves to die. And yet, his kingdom deserves the right to live.

And for that, she follows the insolent intruder who fails to see past the first layer of the Labyrinth, who fails to see the magic working behind the fading walls. The Shinigami taunts her, laughing at her misdirection as she wanders farther and farther from the palace, farther from the incessant beating of her own cruel heart. And what will the king do with this child once she falls into his clutches? Her blood saves the Labyrinth; she is the life force of the kingdom. The shadow knows he will never let her go.

He plays his cards well. Kira knows the game of politics. Everything rests on the troubled path of single pawn—and yet, she is dying. As her essence leaves, the cold heart of the Labyrinth comes to replace it. She is losing herself so quickly to the walls to the magic. Humans are too weak without a heart to guide them.

She needs a guide; she needs direction to point her through the Labyrinth, the unsolvable kingdom to find the palace of the dark king. The shadow can provide that. The shadow knows the way. She has lived within the magic all her life; she is the magic slipping through walls and empty doorways.

With that thought, she flies before the child with the golden hair and the blue eyes, holding out her hand and waiting for the girl to clutch at it, to be pulled through the kingdom of death and shadows. _Never the wiser to the world that had been beyond her comprehension_… Humans are so terribly blind.

_"I wonder if anyone knows how to get through this labyrinth..."_

There had once been a child who had been crowned the king of magic. A black notebook had fallen into his mortal hands—changeling that he was, he saw the inner workings of the Labyrinth. He saw the dark mind that resided in the twisting corners and beaten pathways. Wandering through the streets, he saw the world laid out beneath his feet.

Humans were brought in, challenged, bringing life and essence to a world ruled by mortal whims. They called upon him, the child who ruled over life and death, watching his golden eyes as they pleaded for him to take their unwanted children.

(The silver crown rests lightly upon his brow; his auburn hair has grown longer beneath it, for the Labyrinth is in need of tender care. His mind ages beneath the strain of his kingdom.)

Rationalism soon took the faith in the old ways, and the Goblin King became a legend, fading into obscurity with other half-woven tales. He was at first remembered on occasion with Icarus, with Odysseus, with Hades, and Narcissus; but soon, he fell into deeper shadows, abandoned in dusty, untouched corners where not even the bored scholars bothered to venture. He waited inside his rusting palace, staring at the thirteen hour clock, waiting for the new challenger. They trickled through the doorways, less and less—and then, only to look about them with their scientific ideals and mindsets.

(Always focused on the physics, on the reality that didn't exist within the Labyrinth, focused on the how and the why—they lost their way through the questions of logic and existence.)

He sits there now, cold and bitter, afraid of the time that hangs over him. Eternity has dangled him on puppet strings, and even now, he knows that soon those strings will turn into his noose. The child has become a man and the man a god. He watches as the girl wanders through his hallways, searching for the path, the direction.

The ends justify the means: he has always believed that. He still believes in that single ideal when all others have failed him. The girl is one human, her heart nothing more than a fallible organ—his kingdom, his world, his existence need it far more than she does. She finds it unfair, but then, she cannot see the pattern the fates have woven; she cannot see the value of her blood.

(He had once called the Labyrinth a parasite, a thing that leeches the will and the life from people—but then, it is no more than an extension of humanity itself, always hungering for what it cannot have, can never truly hold.)

He is not their fairy tale, he is not their solution. He belongs to a world unseen by human eyes—incomprehensible, unprecedented. For the world revolves around humanity, yet they cannot see even that as they wander through his kingdom's unsullied pages. The history, the architecture, the design is theirs, stolen from travelers past, fading into dust with the memories long forgotten.

He does not think of the girl. He sees the pawn, not the child. She summoned him through desperation, and in desperation, he acted. The chessboard is set, and the pieces are in play—all depends on the choices of his twisted kingdom.

He has no sympathy for a child who has the nerve to fool with death.

_"I ask for so little."_

The blood drips from her chest; there is a grimace of pain as she stops her quest for an instant to face the stranger. Even now, her heart cries out to her, caged in the King's dark hand, aching to return to her. There should have been no distractions, no stopping, and yet she pauses for the woman in front of her.

Another shadow of the Labyrinth, another blackbird hopping in front her path. This one is silent and pensive, the silver eyes calculating. Her clothes are roughly spun, covering one shoulder but not the other; gloves hide her pale hands from view so that she appears for all the world like another willow tree made of ink.

Her words come swiftly through the silence, echoing through the blood and ink. "So it is you who is to be our salvation. Such a pity you will not survive long enough to reach the castle." There is no mocking smile, but Misa might have preferred that to the softly spoken insults.

Misa does not answer quite yet, preferring the silence to the rebuttal, the silence being the only power she has left in a world of illusions and cheap magic tricks.

"You still have time left. The Labyrinth wants you to live, the Goblin King wants you to live—you have many allies in your mad quest. But time fades quickly. Even now, his clock is approaching the thirteenth hour, the time which does not exist." She motions towards the dripping trees and the flowing shadows, then towards Misa's sunken chest. The shadow doubts the pallor in the girl's cheeks, the blood trickling down her torso, the blank-eyed expression on her face.

"Then why stop me?" Somewhere behind, the demon is cackling. Another joke, another ironic twist of the fates unseen by human eyes. The woman in black turns away from the blonde girl, walks steadily in the opposite direction.

"Without a guide, you will fail, Amane Misa." The words float back, the honesty far more bitter than she expected.

"What makes you say that?" The confidence, the dark hands, the accusing eyes—they are his and not his. This woman is his shadow wandering through stone walls like a phantom; she is his silver eyed ghost.

"You're human. Humans can not see behind the mask; they can't see the thoughts, the blood, the essence of the Labyrinth. You see only its shadow, a glimpse of its true form and nothing more. You wander through this place like a child, kicking, screaming, and bleeding your way through its twists and turns. You search for the heart of this place—how can you find that if you cannot even see its face?"

Raven-haired phantom, she stands before the blue-eyed human, magic swirling about her. The shadows the light—all belong to the woman with the sharp features and the sharper eyes. There is no blood on her hands, only a pair of midnight gloves; her feet are bare, scarred by the Labyrinth running beneath them. She is one with the stones and the sky, a child of earth and air and the meeting between them.

A raven and a shadow—fitting companions on her journey through despair. The heroine always meets a few acquaintances along the way. She followed the trail of bread crumbs and it lead her to the witch's fire, but the devil is willing to strike a bargain—and who is Amane Misa to refuse?

And so she follows silently, her heart speaking for her, the bitterness and anger tumbling through her body. She has almost forgotten the sensation of love. Happiness is a dream to be sought, and so she follows the trail of black feathers. Nevermore, says the raven, human, says the shadow—each one leads her one step closer to the light that waits patiently in palace halls.

Behind her, the trail of blood grows smaller, almost gone. Where before it had been a flood, now only a droplet can be found.


	4. The Cellar Door

A GAME OF CHESS

_(The Cellar Door)_

* * *

"I have yet to solve it," the bent man in the library says. Misa blinks, wondering where the books and the disheveled man have come from. She looks to her companions for advice, but both are strangely silent.

(And it is the king's forgotten words that are racing through her mind, the things he has never told her but that she knows must be true. But these aren't the words of her own fairy tales, her censored, fabricated tales of light and dark. They are his.)

"You mean the Labyrinth?" asks Misa, dumbfounded, wondering where the beginning has gone and why it is the words that bring her attention back. She feels the dried blood against her skin, no longer running, and yet here she is, still walking towards _him_: the king with one thousand smiles and a hundred faces to match them with—master of guise and illusion. Yes, she believes in the Goblin King. She believes in his inhumanity, she believes in his ruthlessness and his guile.

"Of course, what else is there to this world?" The man's dark eyes are like the owl's; the gray of the iris pierces through her thin façade of normalcy. He can see the bloodstains upon her dress. She feels once more the twinge of something she has forgotten, something left behind, and yet she is the Tin Man—she runs just as well without compassion.

"And that's why you'll never solve it, L. You're a fool." The woman with the raven's hair smiles bitterly at the hunched man, her face streaked with dirt and blood from the world of words and ink they have traversed through. "The Labyrinth is not made merely of stonework; it is our breath, it is our life, it is our death. The Labyrinth and the Goblin King are the same and not the same; they are guises for one another, and in this place even time is subject to whim. There is no definition, there is no logic, there are no physics within our world—and that is something you will never understand."

"Hmmm, I suppose that's why I'm sitting here and you're standing there." The crooked man gives a smile. "It can't be solved."

"Why not?" Misa asks before the woman can interrupt. She watches as the man begins to assess her; she notices how his eyes linger on the hole in her bleeding chest. Let him look. The whole world knows. She will get it back. The handicap is only temporary.

"Oh, you may find the center. You may work your way to his palace, stand on the steps with your weepy little eyes— he may let you waltz through his kingdom, he may even give you what you want, but you won't win. No one ever wins. Light Yagami isn't kind to those foolish enough to solve his Labyrinth." He sticks his thumb between his teeth and Misa is struck by how childish he looks, curled in upon himself, his clothes covered in the dust of books no one has bothered to read.

"It is only a fool who seeks victory," the woman whispers. The shadow behind her laughs in delight.

"Then what are you looking for, Misora-san?" he asks bitterly, his words biting and cold like the earth beneath Misa's feet.

"Compromise."

Always there is Light Yagami waiting in the distance, a crystal in his outstretched hand, Sandman, king of the both the pearly and black gates, his gaze the amber of the dragon's sleeping eyes. She can see him, her heart pounding in a box, waiting for the steps that will bring her to his door. _No one ever wins_.

"I'll win," Misa states with assurance. Without her heart to quiver, she feels quite confident. The path to his castle is clear. She has nothing left to lose; she will win because there is nothing more that he can take from her.

They turn to stare at him, all three with their dark eyes locked upon her face—one in mirth, one in skepticism, and one in calculation. They all doubt, but none of them can see.

"I'll beat him at his own game," she says with growing confidence. She doesn't have the heart to lie to them, and the path is so terribly clear.

"You're an idiot," the hunched man states, turning back to his books with a wave of his hand.

"No, I'm not," she responds to the crooked man, seeing him for the defeated intellectual that he is. "I can't lose. He has no power over me."

"He holds your heart in the palm of his hand. That's power enough."

"_And he gave her certain powers."_

The hallway is filled with mirrors and she finds herself walking by her many reflections, each covered in dirt and blood. She looks both forward and back for the door that will deliver her from this place, and yet she cannot find it. She is spread out over infinity, thousands of Misa Amane's blinking and searching in time, a reflection of a reflection.

"You must be looking for the door." The voice is smooth and amused—she almost doesn't recognize its owner. The eyes are still amber and the face is still smooth and sharp, but the hair is a shorter, more reasonable length, the clothing is forgettable and ordinary, and his eyes have grown much softer in the dim lighting of the room.

"Yes," she answers, wondering what to call this new apparition—because she can see the Goblin King in him, and yet he's not quite the same. He's too soft: his hands are smooth and his face is flushed with mortal vigor. He is not the same.

"There are two doors, you know," he says with a distant smile moving closer towards her. "One of them leads out and the other, well…" He trails off and gestures towards the mirrors. "I'm sure you can guess."

"No, I can't," she says grimly, her face a bitter mask of despair as she looks into those soft human eyes. Such a kind tone he has, and yet there is still that immortal apathy beneath.

He shrugs. "If you don't know, there's really no point in telling you, is there?"

"So only one door leads out," Misa repeats watching his eyes for a hint of a lie, a hint of the malice she has seen there. Strangely, she sees none.

"That's right."

"And the other doesn't."

He doesn't answer and instead turns away from her.

She wonders where these doors might be located, and turning around, she sees them. They are plain and unadorned, standing tall and upright, one beside the other. She walks up towards them, dread far away in the heart she has lost. She stares up at them, sensing the peril behind each.

"Which should I pick?" she asks, turning towards the not-Goblin King. He looks at her with wide, innocent eyes and points to the door on the left.

"That one, of course." He says it as if to say, _Isn't it obvious, you stupid girl_?

She watches him, her lips pursed into a frown. She doesn't trust him. She trusted him once and he stole her heart—she'd be a fool to believe in him again. Yet, there are two doors and only one of them opens.

"He's lying, you know."

She turns to see another man standing beside her. This one is sharper than the other, his eyes painted scarlet and his face jagged with immortality. His aura reeks of magic and in his gloved hands, power is woven.

He continues, regardless of her stares: "They're only doors after all."

"What do you mean?" she asks the second man, ignoring the glares of protest from the first.

"They're only the ideas of doors. They aren't the place or the destination—they are merely the process. They don't define what exists beyond their threshold, just like they don't define what exists here. To them we are irrelevant, our desires to escape from one prison into another are irrelevant. They exist merely to exist regardless of us." He shrugs like the first.

"Which should I pick, then?" she asks, not sure of what he has said, staring at the doorways in apprehension.

"Either or neither."

"I have to pick one."

"Do you?"

"Yes. Otherwise I'd never get out."

"That's not such a bad option, is it. After all, you'd never run out of company." He motions to the blood-stained girls in the mirror; each regards the stranger warily.

"They're only reflections."

"And those," he gestures once more to the looming doorways, "are only doors."

She grows frustrated of riddles. It is always riddles in this Goblin Kingdom, always labyrinths and word games, dreams and wishes, things that are real and things that are not. Nothing is definite, nothing is solid. She only wants her heart, she only wants a door, she only wants a way out.

"The left one?" she asks the human. He looks up, surprised that she is referring to him; he smiles in the realization that he has won her trust.

"Yes, that's the one."

"Trust your instincts, trust the mask, trust the illusion and the lies. After all, isn't it better to believe in that fickle hope than to believe in nothing at all?" cries out the darker, inhuman Goblin-King. The shadows of his magic wrap around his fingers as he calls out after her with laughter echoing in his voice.

"Trust me," the human whispers as he clutches her blood-soaked hands and drags forward, turning the handle for her and saying in a whisper, "open the door."

She looks back towards the other one, who is still watching her with those familiar scarlet eyes. He motions for her to continue with a mocking smile; she turns to see the other's gentle, lying smile.

"Goodbye, then," she says, not asking for a name, not needing one. Goblin King is good enough for the pair of them, even as she steps into the darkness that awaits past the illusion. Liars, the pair of them, she thinks as she falls past the illusion, travelling through nothingness and through everything.

They are gone. Only one man stands in their place. The Goblin King looks down upon her with a lifting of his eyebrows and a cocked head. He looks down upon her with a crooked smile and shouts after her, "Until we meet again, heart-less child!"

"_Don't you like your toys?"_

"It's only a dream, you know," the Goblin King whispers to her as they dance. She blinks, seeing for the first time her new surroundings. The mirrors are everywhere and she sees the blonde girl in the arms of the Goblin King waltzing across the crystal dance floor. Crystal raindrops hang from the chandeliers; all around the candles light their path and the masks are everywhere.

"What?" she asks the Goblin King as they turn. Once again she is trapped within those scarlet eyes, the mix of amber beneath. His face is thin and jaded, as pale as moonlight and fishbone—she can't tear her eyes away as he leads her in a circular motion.

"A dream, a fantasy, an illusion, a mask, an un-reality…" He trails off and smiles, a small chuckle coming to his lips. "Only a dream…"

"What is?" she asks again, attempting to tear her eyes away, to look at those other faceless dancers and to see the girl in the mirror, the desperate frightened girl in the mirror with a hole where her heart should be.

"The unanswered riddle only exists in the asking." He is still smiling down at her, that wolfish smile that belongs to him alone. She seethes in his arms; the clock ticks away in the background.

"Where are we?" she asks. He spins her again, coming closer to the candles' flames that edge the room. He is grinning, the scarlet eyes are laughing—she can see his behind his bone white features. She looks about her and sees the masks lining the rooms, people dressed in masks and ball gowns, only his face and only hers.

"You should know. After all, it's your dream," his mocking voice replies in the distance. The clock's toll begin to sound and she sees the terror in her own heartless reflection.

"Are you always so vague?" she asks with a heartless smile across her lips. The cruelty comes far easier than the yearning for him, that heartache she has almost forgotten.

"You ask vague questions," he replies easily as they glide once more across the dance floor. His black clothing is gone and now he is all in white, a ray of light in the crystal mirrors. "Be more precise, my dear, and you may find your heart in the center of the madness…"

Misa then looks down at his hands, the moon stained with the blood of the earth, her blood dripping down his fingers… She looks up into his eyes once again, hearing the laughter echo across the room like the funeral bells of her own world.

"My heart…" she repeats in horror; the word winds itself about her mind with the blood that drips so delicately from his pale fingers. "Why… Why did you want it at all?" she asks the Goblin King. The world of the dancers is slipping away as she looks into his dark eyes.

"Did I want it at all?" his soft voice replies and she sees herself suddenly, a child in her room surrounded by her toys and dolls, looking up at the dark presence with sharp red eyes and blood upon his gloved hand.

"You must have wanted it…" she says, remembering the way it beat in his hand and the cold smile upon his face as he looked down upon it.

He does not answer now—he simply smiles. And yet, somehow in the dream world his smile lacks the edge it has in reality. He is softer, now covered in a haze. He is surrounded by the glow of his white clothing and the crystal that reflects its light upon him; his eyes are sharper but without the malice, and in the room of masked dancers, he simply is.

"You must have wanted it…" she repeats to herself as the dancing slows. They simply stare at each other. The sandman looks down upon her with dark red eyes, and in his hands he holds the glass shards of her broken dreams and realities.

He steps back with arms outstretched, back into the throng of dancers, back into the chaos of the dream with a small, pitying smile upon his face.

"Wait!" she calls out to him as his pale face begins to recede among the masks until she can no longer tell them apart, the masks from his face…

The clock is tolling in the background and the dream begins to shatter as he steps through the mirror with one final laugh at her expense. She reaches out for him again, pain across her worn features.

In the darkness of the dream after the dream, she swears she can hear his voice calling back to her as well…

"_Look what I'm offering you—your dreams."_

"I don't understand it," the man with the hunched back says to the others as Misa stumbles along the broken path. He looks at her in disgust, his raven's eyes narrowed as he shakes his head down at her. Black and white, white and black—this world only has the color red…

"We should have lost by now. Time is travelling much too slowly. _He _must have something to do with this…" He rambles onwards, his eyes narrowing once again and turning towards the woman with the long hair. "Why, why would he help her?"

"You think I understand the Sandman?" she responds sharply, grabbing hold of Misa's arms and hoisting her along the path.

"Yes, I think you do," the man says coldly as they trudge closer and closer to the castle in the distance. It is getting easier, Misa thinks with each step, it's getting easier to live without it. She can't see straight and there is an ache in her chest but she is still walking. She can do this, she can beat him.

"You're an idiot, then," is all the woman says in response to the crooked man. Her eyes darken and she continues to drag Misa forward one step at a time. The crystal palace looms in the distance and the thirteen hour clock ticks away in the back of her mind…

"_Once upon a time."_

"You're late."

The Goblin King is not facing her when she reaches the center. They stand in the middle of another hall of mirrors; the sheets of glass float about through nothingness, and a great clock grows ever closer to the thirteenth hour.

"I've won."

"Perhaps," he replies vaguely and turns so that she can see his dark crimson eyes. There is no smile on his face and he looks at her oddly. His face is drawn and the shadows upon his features seem darker than in the dream.

"I've come for the heart you've stolen from me, Goblin King." She holds out her hand towards him, her shaking features reaching out so that she might receive her prize. He merely looks at it, that ancient expression in his eyes.

"Stolen. You forget that we had a bargain. Besides, are you sure you want it back?"

"Of course. I came for it, didn't I?"

"You take far too much for granted; you forget to ask the price." He smiles, now, and steps towards her; he is holding a curious box between his dark-gloved hands, and he walks until he is in front of her.

"What's the price?"

His smile grows; he shows her the heart. "Take it," he says.

"The price," she repeats her eyes growing wide as he pushes the heart towards her, towards her shaking, desperate fingers.

He says nothing, still smiling, still wearing that wolfish grin.

"You never told me the price!"

The room echoes with her screaming, but all she can see is her fragile, desperate heart beating before her eyes, reaching out for her with each pump.

"You can have it back. I never wanted it anyway."

She takes the cold, bleeding heart from his pale fingertips.

"_There's such a fooled heart…"_

Once upon a time…

She saw the universe stretching before her, every passage, every time, every fork, every choice, every dream, every wish…

In a far off kingdom…

And Little Red Riding Hood said to the wolf…

"Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair…"

There lived a fair maiden…

Her eyes are burning and the world is exploding inside her head, she can see them, she can see every stone, every thought, every step, every drop of blood…

Cinderella forgot her glass slipper at the palace one night… Now it has been broken.

And what Jack wanted more than anything in the world was…

She sees the future, she sees the past, she sees the present, she sees the paths not taken, she sees all probabilities, she sees herself, she sees him, she sees time, she sees death…

And one night the prince found a beautiful maiden sleeping in a glass coffin…

She sees the madness and the chaos before her, close enough to touch, whirling madly about her fingertips…

The witch falls from the cliff face, her face contorted in terror as she realizes that she is about to die and that it has all been for nothing…

She sees her heart.


	5. The Moral of the Story

A GAME OF CHESS

_(The Moral of the Story)_

* * *

When Misa Amane opens her eyes, she finds herself staring at the hot pink satin innards of her familiar but prematurely purchased coffin.

She reaches out and touches the fabric, blinking at the sight of it and wondering just what it is doing there. She can't remember; she finds that she can't remember a lot of things. She pushes against the ceiling, but it remains firm and oppressive.

She can hardly move.

She pushes gently at first. Gradually, she begins to push harder, wondering just where she is and why she's there—she can't remember, she can't remember anything at all.

(The air is stale on her tongue, and she wonders why she can taste death.)

The roof is tearing beneath her fingertips; the wood becomes slivers against her bleeding hands. Funny—she can't remember that her hands were bleeding, she doesn't remember when they started. Above her, through the hole in the coffin, she sees darkness, and she can smell earth.

Something about this frightens her—the fact that it is earth that she smells, like she's underground. She claws above her, praying that she hasn't been swallowed whole.

She's out of the earth faster than she expected; she didn't think she had been buried that shallowly, but she can't remember and the air is clean. She breathes it in slowly, savoring the stark realness of it, the indisputable fact that it is air and that she is breathing it in.

She looks around slowly, noticing all the other shallow graves—each one marked with a grey stone with a few scribblings on it. She's in a graveyard: that would explain the coffin. She turns from the hole she created and walks towards the path.

She walks dimly, noting the rhythm of her feet, a simple thump-thump against the earth—almost like the beating of a heart. She stops, listening, feet stalled against the cold grass.

She hears nothing, and in that moment her eyes grow wide in terror. There is no gentle, reassuring thump-thump. She's alone.

She turns in desperation back towards the hole, towards the darkness, reaching out, wondering if she has forgotten it down there. She can't move.

_I need to go back to sleep_.

She starts walking again, back towards the path that leads her away from the hole; her feet tap out that mocking rhythm. She looks over her shoulder as if searching for someone and then turns back to the path, certain that there is no one there.

Her feet continue tap-tapping all the way home.

"_AH HA, I'm underground…"_

The Goblin King is sitting beside her on the street corner, watching as the people walk past her hardly noticing her presence. She isn't sure what she's doing there, but something in the back of her mind tells her not to question it, so she sits with him instead. Both of them watch as the world moves past, neither caring.

She's so tired; she wishes that she was sleeping. Then again, it's hard to tell the difference anymore because sometimes the dreams don't go away when she wakes up, and the terror remains in the real world until she can't tell where the dream is supposed to be anymore. How are you supposed to sleep if you're already sleeping?

She's still tired.

The trees wave back and forth as the wind dances through them; their boughs laugh with delight. Misa can only watch them grimly, her hand placed upon her empty chest.

"What are you doing here?" Misa finally asks the Goblin King. He doesn't turn towards her but instead continues to lounge upon the sidewalk, eyeing the people with a calculating glance and a casual smile.

"I'm not," he replies, smiling and waving at a blushing young girl as he does so, laughing under his breath.

"You're sitting next to me."

He doesn't respond, but smiles instead and turns his attention away from her once more. She sees the trees still, but now they are blurred by the dancing fae that have appeared in view, their faces glowing with delight and immortality. She blinks and they are gone—another dream.

"What's wrong with me?" she asks the Goblin King softly, and he sighs as if she is being particularly stupid.

"You sold your heart. Surely you expected there to be consequences." He shakes his head in a mockery of disappointment.

"I won," Misa states bluntly, looking out at the shifting world before her—not her own, but someone else's.

"No, Misa. You paid your dues just like everyone else."

There is something not quite right about this Goblin King. He looks tired; he looks old. It is as if the mortal world has aged him. He is no longer smiling, but simply watches the world dance about him. He looks as fatigued as her lost and lonely heart.

She no longer can find it in her heart to give a damn. "What did I lose, then?"

"You can't feel it beating anymore, can you, Misa?" he asks sharply, his red eyes gleaming as he does; the wild magic dances inside of them, and suddenly she knows.

"I never brought it home," she says softly, horror escaping from her mind and grinding itself into her heart, lost in another world. The people have stopped moving, stopped breathing, as if they aren't real either, but are only illusions created in her head.

The street corner begins to fade beneath her pale and shaking fingers.

"I had to leave it behind, I had to leave it…" She swallows. Her throat is so dry and there are tears welling in her eyes, but she can't feel anything, she can't feel a damn thing. God, she remembers the pain now, the madness when the heart fell into her hands and she knew, she knew even then, that it wasn't hers anymore. She looks over at him, sees that his hands remain white as snow and his face innocent of misdeed—so different from when he appeared in her room.

"You bastard."

The magic stirs about him and the street reappears, trees sprouting between the cracks in the pavement. His smile grows all the while as the dream grows about her. She looks up and realizes that the sky has been painted violet; the magic washes across it until she no longer knows if it was ever blue.

His face no longer seems human. The angles become more distinct in the growing light; his bones become a bit too long and too fine, his eyes too sharp and scarlet. The magic wraps itself between his pale fingers as he holds it before her, offering what's left of her heart, and he laughs. He laughs.

Then he is gone.

"_Love without your heartbeat."_

Sometimes she still feels it there, aching in her chest, and she'll look down in surprise because she doesn't feel any different. She still feels impassioned and apathetic, and her brain tells her that nothing will change this and that the Tin Man is a lie. Yet it will be there, its phantom thumping still there in her chest, little more than a casual dream that will never be fulfilled.

She doesn't like it. She wishes it would stay away, go back to where it came from and just leave her alone.

She stands in line for food at a coffee shop; she no longer remembers the name, nor does she care, and she watches as the people shift and twitch in front of her while she remains perfectly still, listening to that phantom beating. When she reaches the cashier she can't help but notice how the employee stares at her from behind that flashing smile, those eyes wide in fear as she takes in Misa's pale face.

She asks what Misa would like to order, and Misa suddenly realizes that she doesn't really feel like eating anything. She isn't hungry anymore, just like she isn't heartsick anymore—it's just a ghost of a feeling there. Something she should be feeling right now. She hasn't eaten in a while, she's realized. the feeling is a ghost, just like the heart.

She walks out of line to stand outside the shop whose name she still doesn't know or care to know and wait for the Goblin King to appear. He does that, sometimes—usually at times like this. He'll simply be there standing next to her and smiling, always smiling. He says that he's just in her head and that he isn't really there; this might be true, but she's not entirely sure it makes much of a difference.

"You do realize that it's a parasite," he says, leaning casually against the window. His eyes watch her lazily, as they always do when he arrives.

"What is?" she asks for clarification in her dead, uncaring tone. She's fairly certain she already knows the answer, and that the answer doesn't matter anyway.

"The Labyrinth, of course." He grins, this time, as if he finds this somewhat ironic. Perhaps it is.

She stares at him blankly, unsure of what emotion she is supposed to convey. She once might have felt shock, betrayal, even, although she can never be sure about things she used to be able to feel. Now, however, it is not a surprise; she only feels a dim acceptance, feels herself nodding slightly, as if this were the most natural thing in the world.

"It's eating your dreams, but you already knew that," the Goblin King continues casually, watching his hands in mock interest. Misa simply stares. "Eating all the humanity from you through that pitiful, thumping, bleeding heart of yours. Soon there will be nothing left—and can you guess what happens next?"

"No," says Misa without regret or thought alongside it, no longer caring that she has not even a hint of her future left.

He smiles, and for a moment she almost thinks that he's not going to tell her, that he's going to leave her the luxury of doubt and ignorance. For a moment she considers thanking him for that. Then he'll leave again, and she'll stay again, and the world will keep on turning again, and it will go on and on and on…

But he doesn't, and she doesn't.

His grin is speaking, a soft crooning tone that is meant to torture, as if he really wants the words to hurt. No Misa, the grin says, that road is much too simple much too painless and even though you don't have a heart I think you deserve some pain. No Misa, the grin continues, the road I have planned for you is much longer and much darker and it won't end—it will go on and on and on and on…

The Goblin King's grin breaks and the words fly from his lips. "You do realize that you are dying."

It isn't a question so she doesn't nod; she simply stares flatly at his delicate features and wishes that she were somewhere else instead.

"Although, dying, perhaps, isn't the best choice of words. Dying is much too clean, too precise. You are fading. Look at your skin. You can practically see through it already—you are fading out of this world, but you aren't fading back into mine." He pauses, watching her reaction, watching for that horrified expression with the words 'I know' written across her pupils. She says nothing, no longer knowing, no longer caring.

She moves this time, away from him, not quite wanting to hear but not motivated enough to stop him. She walks stiffly away, ignoring the delighted look in his eyes, just walking her feet, dragging in that half-hearted rhythm. _Thump-thump_, _thump-thump_, _thump-thump_…

He follows on dancing feet and steps in front of her, blocking her path. He's still smiling, still grinning, as if this show keeps getting better and better.

"I think you know what's happening to you; you're just too terrified to admit it. You're going to disappear. Not even dissolve—you are going to fade. Like a ghost."

She feels the glimmering of anger. Yes, she knows she's a ghost, of course she does. Does he think she's stupid? That she's learned nothing in that goddamned imaginary world he rules? She's not like those others, the ones that stayed behind, who still haven't learned their lessons. Misa knows this, she knows all of this—she just doesn't like saying it because he can't make her and he knows it.

She just stares at him with those blank, empty eyes, waiting for him to say it, to rub it in her face, to gloat just like she knows he wants to. Because if he didn't want to, why the hell would he keep coming back? Why would he even bother if he knew where she would end up?

He says nothing—he only grins.

"_He always lies."_

She stands on the sidewalk beside the gutter, looking up at the stars she can barely see, when she notices that the lamp post is transparent and that the light is swinging back and forth in her vision. Like a pendulum, it hangs and crosses above her, blotting out the stars until there's nothing left but a white blur across her vision.

She closes her eyes and the lamp post is gone.

Misa enters a room and finds that her wishes have turned into fishes and that it is the Goblin King who invitingly displays his net. Her feet tap out that limping rhythm they have grown so fond of—_thump-thump thump-thump thump-thump_…

She stands by him and watches as the fish dance before her, each with glazed, desperate eyes, writhing and squirming, drowning. She wants to ask which fish is which wish because she can't tell anymore—they're all drowning and all dying. Things look the same to her. But before she can ask, the fish are gone and she's standing before a row of doors.

The Goblin King is still there, and this time he is talking. "When is a door not a door?" he asks her with the fey grin he sometimes wears.

She blinks, still thinking of fishes and wishes and the casting of nets, but she thinks about the answer also.

"When it's a jar," she says but doors don't turn into jars, they remain doors. She cocks her head, because that isn't the answer to the riddle; the doors are jars, but then why do the doors stay doors? They should all be jars now.

He shakes his head from side to side as if in pity. "So sorry, but that's not the right answer."

"You're lying. The doors aren't doors when they're a jar. I know this." She is frustrated and is surprised at this, thinking herself beyond feeling. This makes her smile a little—it makes her want to laugh in his face because she still has something left.

"No Misa, a door is not a door when it is a door." He grins again, never faltering, and steps closer, drawing her into his arms as if she were a child in need of comfort. In that moment she enviously hears the thump-thumping of his own immortal heart.

She wants the doors to go away, and they do, but they are not replaced by jars.

She is watching her own hands fade, and this time she knows she is in reality. She sees the people rushing past, not noticing her transparent bare feet or her fading yellow hair—she is only a shade to them. Later they may remember seeing a blurred figure in the glass. She looks for the Goblin King but he is not there; she is not sure whether or not she is relieved. She is fading.

She starts walking, thinking the movement might keep her in the world, might keep her here a little bit longer, in the world and out of the chaos that is inside her head, away from the fading and the…

She is dancing in the crystal ballroom, but this time she is in a maid's outfit and he is in a black tailcoat. They are waltzing as if they have never stopped and the world is falling down down down…

Her feet stall on the pavement and she looks up to where the sun has grown low in the horizon, cursing her fishes and her wishes and her jars and her doors…

Her feet are dangling over the abyss and this time she thinks she might actually jump. She isn't sure yet, she just needs some more time, some more time before…

But Oz never did give nothing to the Tin Man that he didn't already have…

"_It's against the rules to throw other people's heads!"_

"I am dying," she says, but no one is listening. Even the Goblin King is gone and it is just her now.

She repeats this phrase to herself. "I am dying."

I know this riddle, she thinks. A door is a door but when it isn't a door it's a jar. Because that is the answer and has always been the answer. That is the riddle, and she is dying.

She has been fading for a while, longer than she can count, longer than she thought, but it seems now that she is dying.

She tries to smile but the thing is crooked and jagged and hates the dimensions of her face.

Oz never did give nothing…

"_It's a crystal. Nothing more."_

"I wish…" she begins, but then stops, thinking of the dying fishes. Which one should she pick? There is an entire sea of them before her and she can hardly tell the difference.

A warning runs through her head, reminding her of the last time she wished for something. She ignores it and continues to observe the fish. Her hands are fading, she can't see them anymore, she's trying to remember if they're still there.

Sometimes she thinks they are and yet…

Sometimes they're not.

"_Nothing to be afraid of…"_

Give nothing to the hollow man…


End file.
